Bloomberg hires Pulitzer winner Armstrong in Seattle

Bloomberg’s Robert Blau and Otis Bilodeau sent the following note to staff on Monday:

We’ve long admired Ken Armstrong for the depth of his reporting and the inventiveness of his storytelling. He’s investigated a broad range of topics, from criminal justice to college sports. He’s mastered narrative across multiple platforms — newspapers, magazines, books, radio — and helped convert his work to the screen. And in a few weeks he’ll be joining us — starting on June 3, and based in Seattle.

Ken will report and edit stories as a player-coach, work with reporters to develop investigations, and spread the art (and sweat equity) of longform narrative in the newsroom.

He’s worked in news organizations of all shapes and sizes, most recently at ProPublica. The 2022 story he co-authored with Raquel Rutledge, The Landlord and the Tenant, won the National Magazine Award for feature writing. His reporting with Meribah Knight on the illegal jailing of kids in a Tennessee County became the basis of an award-winning 2023 podcast by Serial Productions and the New York Times.

At the Marshall Project, he won the 2016 Pulitzer for explanatory reporting for “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” written with ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller. Their work became an eight-part Netflix series, and a “This American Life” episode, both of which won Peabody Awards.

At the Seattle Times, he won the 2012 Pulitzer for investigative reporting and shared in two other Pulitzers awarded to the newspaper’s staff for breaking news.

I got to know Ken at the Chicago Tribune, where he tackled prosecutorial misconduct, wrongful convictions and the injustices of capital punishment. A spreadsheet of tainted court cases he assembled by hand, the first of its kind, launched multiple investigations. Ultimately, the reporting he produced with other Tribune journalists helped convince the Illinois governor to declare a moratorium on executions and to clear Death Row.

In addition to his Pulitzers, he has collected five other nominations as a finalist as well as the John Chancellor Award from Columbia for lifetime achievement. He has six awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors and five George Polk awards.